Real Estate Investor Shares His Secret---Where to Get the Money

“Buy real estate with No Money Down”. This caption has been used over and over by the so-called real estate gurus and experts. Late night television is filled with infomercials featuring professional salesmen promising to help you make a fortune in real estate. The fees for their CD’s and training materials can be as much as $10,000. Some of them actually make good on their promises. Unfortunately, most of them don’t.

The mechanics of making money in real estate can be learned by anyone who has a strong enough interest and average intelligence. Technically, no money down deals are possible to find (and so is finding a needle in a hay stack!), but those types of deals are few and far between.

So what is the best way to get started? Use someone else’s money of course. Unless you have hundreds of thousands of dollars in your savings account, or have access to an endless stream of cash, financing your real estate deals can be the biggest hurdle you have to overcome. Therefore, learning how to use someone else’s money is a more effective way to be successful investing in real estate.

Professional real estate investor Dave Berens not only conducts workshops to teach his students the nut and bolts of real estate investing, he also includes what I call the “legs” in his curriculum---showing you how to get the money. Let’s face it, unless you have a way to fund your transactions, all the training in the world will not do you much good. Last night in Culver City, Dave held a workshop called “Structuring Deals with Private Money” for members of “The Naked Real Estate Investor’s Club” (where they reveal the bare truth about real estate investing). The club, which was founded by Rosie Nieto and includes burgeoning, beginning and experienced investors, were fed a wealth of knowledge that can be easily integrated into each investor’s own business model.

Dave’s instructional style is matter of fact and is not full of hype and unrealistic theories. He provides little known common-sense strategies for raising capital. Berens has used these same techniques to close approximately 60 real estate transactions in less than 5 years. Many of the experienced real estate investors in attendance were surprised to find out that Dave does not use hard money or conventional lenders to finance his deals. He never provides a credit report, proof of income, or a personal financial statement. And if this doesn’t get you excited, then consider that Dave makes no installment payments on the money he borrows, and he pays himself when he buys the property. After the purchase, he rehabs and flips the property for a back-end profit. If you have a better business model than that you should be teaching others what you know!

The best thing about Dave Berens’ classes is that the fees for attending can be less than the cost of taking your family to dinner. Not only will he teach you how to build a successful real estate investment business, he will assist you with your real estate transactions, including raising the capital. To learn more about how you may attend one of Dave Berens' real estate workshops, visit his web site at www.davidberensrealestate.com, send him an email at dberens@roadrunner.com, or call his office at 818-206-8154.

Clifford Wright is a licensed real estate agent, mortgage lending professional, and real estate investor with more than 23 years of experience in the industry. He is also the host of blog talk radio show, "Hope 4 Families Radio."